Tings are unraveling in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the second of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a universe that manifests, here more than ever, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along new and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from states, and accumulating in the offices of religious leaders, the coffers of corporations, the control of mobs. "Some force is at work, stealthily, gradually", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his post in an city cafe. "Things we thought were stable and solid are deteriorating and failing."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Just what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that propels The Rose Field, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, reportedly, Pullman's final venture into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting universe he first unveiled three decades past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose geography maps on to that of our world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the people appear and reason and act like us, but are joined by external spirits, beings in beast form; where the air are populated with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but underneath, vehicles are taken and drinks is consumed, and older academics carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still clearly the spiky and determined main character of the previous installments, but more mature, sadder, more careful, more doubtful. This restraint is intensified by her division from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to depart in search of that innocent part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which saw the protagonist undertake a adventurous voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with wonder and danger on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in motion, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the faith's controlling power, and the author's brilliantly sinister incarnation of rigid, procedural evil – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. The antagonist – Lyra's relative, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of president of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his recently acquired authority to expand the institution's control. Another protagonist, who rescued young Lyra to refuge along a overflowing Thames as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an academic with a additional duty in espionage: he is assigned to the city to find out more about Delamare's aims. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and precious essential oil which manifests mysteriously to be the source of a social and economic upheaval rippling out from Central Asia. The extract is regarded by various factions as a marketable commodity, by others as a empirical or esoteric miracle, and by further factions – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an affront that must be obliterated. The question of its origins, its significance, and whether it should be removed or protected is becoming urgent.
As in the first series, our protagonist's deeds, and her future, are shown to be inseparably linked with the fate of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran broadly in side by side. In the conclusion, they merge. Similar to the original series, her movements and her destiny are unveiled to be inseparably linked with the fate of the realm. Her personal quest to rejoin with her companion and regain her creativity becomes the central battleground in a larger battle with an controlling system which, as such regimes often attempt, is seeking to stifle autonomy of thought, originality and expression: all the personal, resistant ways in which humans can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The book starts with the finding of a collection of strange fissures in the makeup of the Earth's sky: portals that look to lead to different dimensions. One such window appears to be the source of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The authority, with the antagonist at its leadership, labels these windows as a problem to the church's doctrine and aims to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to shift from strict logic and return to instinct, however, her certainty that these locations must be preserved – that what they stand for and their value is mysteriously crucial – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a philosophical conflict between purity and knowledge is established.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
